Nabby

They will be paying a loan fee or wages or ideally both ...we are not going to be loaning him to do them a favour 

1 minute ago, Jono62 said:

Better than Bentancur.

Poor bastard been used as a smoke screen for this deal the whole time 

Was his comment about former players thinking they can just walk into management aimed at Dwight ....

Anyway good interview , feeling positive about the next game now

1 minute ago, Adam2003 said:

Worrying isn’t it when you think of it like that. Wonder what it tells us!

it's not that they don't get poached they go on to do sod all elsewhere ...just in recent times Garde , Sherwood , Lambert , Mcleish 

7 minutes ago, Mister_a said:

Yeah, doesn't look good for Ole either!

Being bailed out by Ronaldo 

Just now, mrchnry said:

Pinch of salt but got this from someone who is not prone to gossip. 

3 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

The bad signs IMO were as follows:

• Purslow trying to convince the fans that Ings + Bailey + Buendia was some kind of pre-planned move to replace Grealish, when we all know Buendia was coming anyway, and Ings is a completely different player who didn't really suit our setup.
• No serious investment in other areas of the pitch besides obvious squad players (Young, Tuanzebe), when we all knew we needed competition for places at CDM (especially) and full back (with Guilbert leaving).
• The way Suso was scapegoated the summer before, when by all accounts he followed Purslow's brief.
• The obvious lies about Grealish's buyout clause, which are fair enough tbh (why advertise it?), but review some of the things that were said and you realise we were all severely misled - perhaps that stretches to ROK and Terry.
• The mysterious injury to Grealish, who has been absolutely fine so far at City.
• And then JT leaving just as he appeared to be becoming increasingly influential on match days.

You can see this all as Smith losing authority, or you can see it as Purslow meddling, or maybe a third party undermining things (Shakespeare). It's so hard to tell from the outside, isn't it, until someone spills to a journo?

My general view is that most managers achieve "par" for their squad over the long-term, and only a handful (Klopp etc) dramatically improve a side with their ability and personality. Especially nowadays when so much is handled by data teams, analysts, coaches, etc.

So when things are going wrong, it's easy to point the finger at the manager, and I agree he is having a nightmare at the moment. But I doubt he's the only problem, and I doubt sacking him mid-season will fix everything.

One of the best things Brighton did was give Hughton a full season before replacing him with Potter. Didn't destabilise the club, gave Potter a whole summer to work with the team. Unless we're really flirting with relegation (seems unlikely to me tbh), I would plan to do the same here with Smith, unless things really are completely ****ed in the dressing room.

We are , 5 wins in 27 is the stat I saw earlier in this thread and conceding 2 or more goals game after game - only Norwich IMO look worse than us and maybe Newcastle , but the latter obviously will recruit a new boss and through millions at it in Jan.

Any one take the Soton manager , done well there with no funding and losing best players contantly ..worry is like Smith they go on really bad runs 

1 minute ago, Indigo said:

The concerning thing for me is that we haven't really had a consistent identity at all, and at this stage I don't even know what "kind" of team we are when the same can't be said of any other side in the league outside of maybe Norwich. We went from a largely possession-based side in the Championship in line with what Dean had been doing t Brentford, to granted understandably losing some of that in the survival season, but without the probably needed pragmatism until post-lockdown, to being heavily counter-attacking with a heavy reliance on Grealish last time out to now where it's all a bit of a mess.

Statistically we're out on our own in terms of how fast and direct we're moving the ball forward, but watching this I'm not sure how much of this is intentional given that we often attempt to build from the back, only to be unable to deal with an opposition press and either have our LCB lump it forward to one of or a pair of strikers who aren't exactly target men, or Targett and Konsa giving it back to Emi to do the same. Given Smith cited a lack of being able to maintain possession last season as an issue, and recruited both players and a coach specifically to address it, it worries me that we almost seem as lost as ever in what we're trying to do or at least are failing to improve on these shortcomings.

Love the guy, have all the time in the world for him and would love to see him turn it around, but it's never a good sign when teams lose that sense of identity in a rut and just seem to be doing whatever they can just to get out of it. This *feels* worse than just a loss of form at the moment, something you can't really quantify but as Villa fans we've all seen before for it to seem familiar. Would love to be wrong mind.

Style of play 

1) Kick off , kick it high and down the wing like a rugby kick off ...

2) Lump it up the wings , mostly left for Olly to chase 

thats about it 

We play it out of defence in only for , generally Mings to wack it forward ..might as well just let Emi kick it long 

Just now, sne said:

Our issue when we play it is mainly the wide players. Cash and especially Targett are not good enough. Cash might grow in to it, Targett never will. Compare that to the players Chelsea or Inter have on the flanks and it's night and day (obviously)

I agree Targett is no way a wing back , the guy Arsenal payed 8 mil for looks good business in that role ..

At chelsea they have Chillwell who has been scoring and regularly getting shot son target as he is so far forward helping attack ..Cash gets into similar positions but Targett just isn't good enough.He is a solid enough LB but at wingback he lacks the ability to run with the ball and natural pace 

I don't think you can completely rule out 3 at the back when the current champs league holders and current league leaders are playing it ...

People saying drop Watkins , realize that Smiths main tactic ( he even mentioned in the Wolves game ) is the long ball into space down the line for Watkins to chase ...its why Mings is always punting it down the line 

4 hours ago, TRO said:

problem is that inflation is not just confined to them and their bubble......it would impact on us ,when we come to buy...and every other club.

It will impact this football  industry like a "Snow Globe" been shaken,every associated industry could be affected....its like an earth quake.

Should the OP be....."lets all laugh with Newcastle( Now)"

PS there is still a good percentage of elite players, coaches, that will still go for the money alone, so Newcastle will make an impact, from that.

Which is part of the reason Real and Barca are in such a mess as they have tried to keep up with them without the oil money to fund it .Italian football is hardly in great shape finance wise either ,certainly Juv are struggling.

She says its not sport washing as if it was they would buy an American franchise not a team in relegation zone 

1)No one is relegated in October 

2)What Franchise are you buying for 300 mil 

3) What franchise has global appeal of PL football 

4)You can't spend your way to success in NFL/NBA etc

5)"Deserve" to be at the top ..**** off

As for Geordies , the dark times of Ashley meant he ran the club as a business and left them not debt free but in profit  and they seem to forget at one point the club was close to going to the 3rd division before John Hall took over - thats dark times ...Now we will be back to hearing about how the number 9 is special as newcastle because you know other clubs don't value strikers at all.

Just now, Davkaus said:

There's already rumours of them buying Inter next.

Exactly !!! Like city this is just the start of the grand plan ...

Kane is the one they will go for IMO ...they will outbid city to as statement of intent 

1 minute ago, Farlz said:

They absolutely won't.

They will they are literally going to use City as a blueprint ( not just Man City the whole City group which has brought up clubs all over the world ) their aim is exactly the same ..PR for Saudi to get away from Oil reliance and to make people think of them as sports owners not journalist killers ..

They have been down but they are not in debt  , they didn't nearly go bankrupt and not had points deductions and ended up in non-league ..the way their fans go on about the bad times is absurd. 

Also the Reuben brothers have a 10% share and are worth 16bil themselves so ..

Anyone thinking they won't be challengers only need to look at City and PSG who not only have become constant league winners , they also dragged Real,Barca etc into spending more and more who had no oil money backing have have left them bankrupt 

If they havd brought in summer we could of gotten £150mil for Jack FFS ...

25 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

They'll do lots of things with sponsorship and with income generation.

They're in a position where they can ask companies competing for a billion pound contract to build roads in Saudi Arabia if they might want to consider sponsoring Newcastle's training ground for £10m a year, they're in a position where companies that want to keep Saudi Arabia happy will be falling over themselves to throw money into Newcastle.

I think they'll do it over time rather than immediately, but don't be under any illusions that they're going to make it work - the Premier league is based on the principle that the richest team should win - Newcastle are now the richest team.

 

 

Exactly , it won't be this season or next but they will get there ..like City this is about SA using Oil money to diversify and protect their income as demand for Oil fades.So look forward to the SA Airlines sponsoring them and the stadium and lots of PR for SA.

Wolves now in for Kamara 

Not alot spent in Europe this season , Inter who won Serie A are 50mil up in sales for example. I think we may well end up waiting till late in the window when clubs get more desperate to make further signings . I also think they is going to be alot of loans going on as that all clubs will be able to afford.

I do wonder if we do make some signings they will be like the one's we have made so far or we go for the exciting big name bums on seats / shirt selling player 

What a **** Moron ..

34 minutes ago, MentalM said:

I think Milner handled his transfer the best. Said that City had to fix it before a certain date else he would stay, and they fixed. Clear and no back and forth. 

Also put in a MOTM performance in his last game for us 

I felt with Milner , Barry and certainly Delph city only brought them to keep in within rules for home grown players , Chelsea with Barkley and Drinkwater are the same 

4 minutes ago, Aston_Villan4 said:

The personal finances thing is always interesting to me. He’s making £125k a week and was guaranteed £200-250k in his new contract at Villa. Obviously 50k-100k a week with Man City is a lot more but at Villa he’s a multi-millionaire already making millions guaranteed to make even more millions. He’s set for life as it is. This is more about him with the path of least resistant to trophies.

I imagine at a higher profile club ..then there is also increased sponsorship deals etc ..

Also tbh with no CL money offering him 200k a week would have been a huge layout and likely could of stopped us investing elsewhere and certainly he would of been on much more than the rest of the squad